My wife and I have recently signed up for the Spanish Health Service. We went to the our new Spanish GP and my wife gave him a list of the drugs she was being prescribed in the UK and after some questions, etc, he gave her a prescription for the Spanish equiverlants. When we went to the farmacia with the prescription, the pharmacist supplied the drugs, but the cost was higher than we expected.She said that there was a discount of 50% on the drugs.I explained that we were pensioners and had only expected to pay 10% of the cost,she said that not all pensioners pay 10%, some pay more depending on their income.When I looked at the receipt I saw that most of the drugs were 50% off,but a couple were 90% off. So even more confusing.Looking on the web, it does say that pensioners should only pay 10%,unless they are earning more than 100k, which we certainly are not.Obviously think that this is a mistake, but question is, how do we get it sorted ? Any suggestions would be helpful.

We have only been in Spain a few months and are not yet tax resident, so have not submitted any tax returns. However, I would not think that they would assume that we had an income of more than 100k. What I have read is that if you are a pensioner and you have not submitted a tax return than blanket charges of 10% should be charged.

We signed up using an S1 form. We haven't actually received our Spanish medical card yet, we submitted the S1 form, Residencia card,etc, 3 weeks ago at the INSS office,it apparently takes about 6 weeks to come through. However, we are on the system with our own medical number.

The problem may well be caused by the fact that you have only recently got on the system.No doubt it will sort itself out in due course, but I would be inclined to go back to the INSS office and see if they can sort it out. The pharmacist can only do what his computer tells him to do and I doubt that your doctor can be much help either.

Yes, had already come to the conclusion that we would need to go back to INSS. Just wondered if anyone else had had similar problems. Was thinking of waiting until our health cards arrived, but don't think that will make much difference, as health card effectively just does the same as the health number we already have, i.e. allows us to be identified on the system. But, as you say may be just down to us not been properly setup on the system yet.

From memory (and that's not reliable) I went on the Health website and accessed my data which told me where I was registered, who my doctor is and also my nurse. Additionally it stated what my contribution is ( 10% in my case with a monthly apportion of €8.23).

Thanks Gerry, that is very useful. I have had a look at the website and have managed to access our data. It has both of us with a contribution percentage of 50%, with a code of TSI 004. Looked up that code and it says that equates to someone working with income between 18k and 100k. Well we are retired, so should be classed as TS002, which has a contribution of 10%.Can't see anywhere on the health InterSAS website how to query the contribution, so guess will have to go back to INSS office to try to sort it. Problem is that our Spanish is not up to much, so that will be a problem.